Mashups vs Portals

I found the Wikipedia article on Mashups absolutely fascinating. The grid showing the main difference between portals and mashups was very useful. I can see that mashups are a lot more malleable than portals and therefore much better for personalised use or to obtain a certain 'snapshot' or view of something, using different sources, at a particular time presumably in real-time if possible (such as in business). The possibilities are incredible really with this hybridisation or aggregation technology. I particularly noted the two comments "The web 2.0 is all about the personalisation of information" and "As they are a part of the web 2.0, mashups increase the level of personalization of the Internet". These comments hit the nail on the head regarding so much of this new technology. Society at the moment seems to be a weird mix of the "look at me", and "it's all about me" generation and yet people have an interest in global things too.

The British Library London maps site was cool, but I was thinking how much better it would be if, as you watch the journey video, it would show you progressing on the map. See, I'm already wanting my own personal mashup of the information! I thought the Voicethread software and design was pretty amazing. The interactive functionality is great. I especially liked, for example, the teacher and his class commenting (using recorded audio) on the dragon drawing and the animation they added circling the dragon's tail to illustrate their comment. How great is that technology?!? I can definitely see how this type of software would make visiting local and/or historical information so much more exciting, especially for younger library customers. Older people could add their own comments about local and /or historical photographs, adding richness to the original resources.

I tried out a couple of the London map mashups on the Virtual Tourism blog, which combined videos and mapping sources. The Southbank Walk was quite good although, again, it would be good to have a marker of some kind move from one location to the next on the map as the video progressed. The user really needs to know what the landmarks look like already and what they are called otherwise. The downside of all this technology was evident in one which combined Google Maps with a YouTube video of St Paul's Cathedral. Better than nothing but the home-made type video was poor quality, compared with the high quality production we are used to with TV and DVDs. The mashup of the Katherine Gorge would be useful for tourists and schoolchildren although again, the quality of the YouTube video was poor. Zooming into the Gorge on the TerraMetrics image was fun though! I suppose these types of mashup are good for a quick 'snapshot' about one thing. The Star Viewer was very cool, combining fun interactivity and lovely clear, wonderful images, with pleasant audio. The Hubble Story, drawing video from YouTube was fantastic.